What HASH are you using. The instructions you are following tell you to use the hash suggested in the ipfs init command, which is ipfs cat /ipfs/QmQPeNsJPyVWPFDVHb77w8G42Fvo15z4bG2X8D2GhfbSXc/readme. Yet you say your init did not complete so you did not see that message.

ipfs cat /ipfs/QmW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ/cat.jpg > cat.jpg works well for me. Check permissions, whether you can use another program to open it or preview it in your file explorer to figure out what is wrong with cat.jpg.

More Searching, I don’t know if it is accurate information but it seems like a common response it doesn’t work for everyone due to many factors regarding versions, platform, software installed, security settings, etc…

I believe I have this issue isolated to something with cat or path related which might have some relation to security settings.

Might just move this to a virtual box or WSL to test with to get around this.